Please join Wayne State University's Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors (CURES) for their upcoming seminar on March 28, 2024 at 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. ET. The seminar will be offered in-person and virtually and is free to attend; registration is required. The Zoom link will be emailed to all registrants prior to Mar. 28.

The guest speaker will be Dr. Trevor M. Penning, professor, the Thelma Brown & Henry Charles Molinoff Professor of Pharmacology and director of the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Penning will present, "Air Pollution and Lung Cancer and NRF2 (NFE2L2)."

Abstract:

Air pollution is ranked as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency of Cancer and accounts for 230,000 lung cancer cases per year globally. Dr. Penning and his research team has used retrospective exposomic features to develop a multi-criteria decision analysis to develop air pollution hazard indices for the Philadelphia metropolitan region and found an association with lung cancer incidence in smokers and never smokers. Knowing that diesel exhaust is a component of air pollution, they have studied the metabolic activation of nitroarenes in human lung cells. They have found that the major nitroreductases involved are the aldo-keto reductases (AKR1C1-AKR1C3) which are induced by NRF2. CRISPR/Cas9 knock-down of NRF2 leads to an elimination of the metabolic activation of the nitroarenes. Their findings suggest that in the context of diesel exhaust exposure NRF2 activation may be deleterious. [Supported by P30-ES013508 and R01-ES029294]

Biosketch:

Dr. Penning, the Thelma Brown and Henry Charles Molinoff Professor of Pharmacology, is a professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania and has been the Director of the Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET) since its founding in 2006. He formulated the strategic vision of the CEET from its inception and built the environmental health science identity of the CEET at the University, regional, and national level. 

As Director of the CEET, Dr. Penning has focused the center’s research around the connections between human disease and environmental exposures and emphasized the importance of using this research to mitigate health impacts on vulnerable communities both locally and globally.

Dr. Penning received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Southampton University in the U.K. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, he was a research associate at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine.